About Rationally Speaking

Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Friday, October 01, 2010

Human, know thy place!

By Julia Galef

I kicked off a recent episode of the Rationally Speaking podcast on the topic of transhumanism by defining it as “the idea that we should be pursuing science and technology to improve the human condition, modifying our bodies and our minds to make us smarter, healthier, happier, and potentially longer-lived.”

In response to my (pretty standard) definition, Massimo understandably expressed some skepticism about why there needs to be a transhumanist movement at all, given how incontestable their mission statement seems to be. As he rhetorically asked, “Is transhumanism more than just the idea that we should be using technologies to improve the human condition? Because that seems a pretty uncontroversial point.” Later in the episode, referring to things such as radical life extension and modifications of our minds and genomes, Massimo said, “I don't think these are things that one can necessarily have objections to in principle.”

It's a perfectly reasonable sentiment, and one that others have expressed as well. On the teaser before the episode, one of our commenters, Alex SL, said, “I am not sure if anybody apart from maybe some churches can be said to oppose transhumanism. If somebody comes up with a robotic arm, or a brain implant that improves memory, hooray! Who will have any problems with that?”

Actually, a lot of people. I completely share Massimo's and Alex SL's attitude that if we could feasibly improve everyone's bodies, minds and lifespans, that should be a no-brainer. But I think they've underestimated the degree to which this point is far from a no-brainer for the rest of the world. There are a surprising number of people whose reaction, when they are presented with the possibility of making humanity much healthier, smarter and longer-lived, is not “That would be great,” nor “That would be great, but it's infeasible,” nor even “That would be great, but it's too risky.” Their reaction is, “That would be terrible.”

The people with this attitude aren't just fringe fundamentalists who are fearful of messing with God's Plan. Many of them are prestigious professors and authors whose arguments make no mention of religion. One of the most prominent examples is political theorist Francis Fukuyama, author of End of History, who published a book in 2003 called “Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution.” In it he argues that we will lose our “essential” humanity by enhancing ourselves, and that the result will be a loss of respect for “human dignity” and a collapse of morality.

Fukuyama's reasoning represents a prominent strain of thought about human enhancement, and one that I find doubly fallacious. (Fukuyama is aware of the following criticisms, but neither I nor other reviewers were impressed by his attempt to defend himself against them.) The idea that the status quo represents some “essential” quality of humanity collapses when you zoom out and look at the steady change in the human condition over previous millennia. Our ancestors were less knowledgable, more tribalistic, less healthy, shorter-lived; would Fukuyama have argued for the preservation of all those qualities on the grounds that, in their respective time, they constituted an “essential human nature”? And even if there were such a thing as a persistent “human nature,” why is it necessarily worth preserving? In other words, I would argue that Fukuyama is committing both the fallacy of essentialism (there exists a distinct thing that is “human nature”) and the appeal to nature (the way things naturally are is how they ought to be).

But, while I find Fukuyama's argument fallacious, other common arguments against the transhumanist worldview strike me as downright creepy. I'm referring especially to the premise that death and suffering are beautiful, a sentiment which I had hoped I’d seen the last of after I parted ways with my goth friends in high school. Alas, it lives on!

Writer Bill McKibben, who was called “probably the nation's leading environmentalist” by the Boston Globe this year, and “the world's best green journalist” by Time magazine, published a book in 2003 called “Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.” In it he writes, “That is the choice... one that no human should have to make... To be launched into a future without bounds, where meaning may evaporate.” McKibben concludes that it is likely that “meaning and pain, meaning and transience are inextricably intertwined.” Or as one blogger tartly paraphrased: “If we all live long healthy happy lives, Bill’s favorite poetry will become obsolete.”

Best-selling books aren't the only way this kind of thinking impacts the public. President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, which advised him from 2001-2009, was steeped in it. Harvard professor of political philosophy Michael J. Sandel served on the Council from 2002-2005 and penned an article in the Atlantic Monthly called “The Case Against Perfection,” in which he objected to genetic engineering on the grounds that, basically, it’s uppity. He argues that genetic engineering is “the ultimate expression of our resolve to see ourselves astride the world, the masters of our nature.” Better we should be bowing in submission than standing in mastery, Sandel feels. Mastery “threatens to banish our appreciation of life as a gift,” he warns, and submitting to forces outside our control “restrains our tendency toward hubris.”

If you like Sandel's “It's uppity” argument against human enhancement, you'll love his fellow Councilmember Dr. William Hurlbut's argument against life extension: “It's unmanly.” Hurlbut's exact words, delivered in a 2007 debate with Aubrey de Grey: “I actually find a preoccupation with anti-aging technologies to be, I think, somewhat spiritually immature and unmanly... I’m inclined to think that there’s something profound about aging and death.”

And Council chairman Dr. Leon Kass, a professor of bioethics from the University of Chicago who served from 2001-2005, was arguably the worst of all. Like McKibben, Kass has frequently argued against radical life extension on the grounds that life's transience is central to its meaningfulness. “Could the beauty of flowers depend on the fact that they will soon wither?” he once asked. “How deeply could one deathless ‘human’ being love another?”

Kass has also argued against human enhancements on the same grounds as Fukuyama, that we shouldn't deviate from our proper nature as human beings. “To turn a man into a cockroach— as we don’t need Kafka to show us —would be dehumanizing. To try to turn a man into more than a man might be so as well,” he said. And Kass completes the anti-transhumanist triad (it robs life of meaning; it's dehumanizing; it's hubris) by echoing Sandel's call for humility and gratitude, urging, “We need a particular regard and respect for the special gift that is our own given nature.”

By now you may have noticed a familiar ring to a lot of this language. The idea that it's virtuous to suffer, and to humbly surrender control of your own fate, is a cornerstone of Christian morality. Mother Teresa's Third World hospices were a grim case in point. They denied pain relief to their patients, not because Mother Teresa's mission couldn't afford morphine, but because she believed her patients' suffering was a good thing. "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ," she said.

Catholics may be unparalleled in their glorification of suffering, with their depictions of the crucifixion and their luridly gory saints' deaths, but Protestantism can give them a run for their money when it comes to prostration. “I will bow and be humble... I will bow and will be broken, yea, I'll fall upon the rock...” sing the Shakers in one of the religion's most famous hymns. I remember that song giving me the creeps when I first encountered it as a child in a chorus, and I subsequently came to understand that it's fairly representative of standard Christian tropes: surrendering to God, submitting to God, trusting that God has good reasons for your suffering.

I suppose I can understand that if you believe in an all-powerful entity who will become irate if he thinks you are ungrateful for anything, then this kind of groveling might seem like a smart strategic move. But what I can't understand is adopting these same attitudes in the absence of any religious context. When secular people chastise each other for the “hubris” of trying to improve the “gift” of life they've received, I want to ask them: just who, exactly, are you groveling to? Who, exactly, are you afraid of affronting if you dare to reach for better things?

Thisis why transhumanism is most needed, from my perspective – to counter the astoundingly widespread attitude that suffering and 80-year-lifespans are good things that are worth preserving. That attitude may make sense conditional on certain peculiarly masochistic theologies, but the rest of us have no need to defer to it. It also may have been a comforting thing to tell ourselves back when we had no hope of remedying our situation, but that's not necessarily the case anymore.

And to people like Kass, and Hurlbut, and McKibben, I say: Dear Sirs, I understand that you would like me to shrivel up and die in agony so that you can find beauty in the world, and I respect that. But before we go that route, maybe first we could try the alternate approach of broadening your aesthetic horizons? Just a suggestion. I do hope you'll think it over.

54 comments:

A more quotidian anti-transhumanism takes place anytime somebody makes the argument that various health interventions such as antidepressants, appetite suppressants, liposuction, cognitive enhancers etc. are in some sense "cheating" or that the outcomes are "not real."

(NB: there may be more rational reasons for concern wrt medication, e.g., addiction, drug interactions, unforeseen consequences - I'm just addressing this particular line of argument).

The fundamental take home message from biology to ethics is that humans are not optimized for *anything* - not happiness, not sustained intellectual work, not situationally useful desires - nothing.

Our bodies break down muscle before fat, our brains can know smoking is deadly but still want it, our bodies feel pain (pain!!!) when we exercise...

I think there is a seperation of Transhumanism and what Massimo is referring to. Things like robotic arms and the like come from trying to deal with a specific defect and thus seperate it from Transhumanism. I would define transhumanism the same way you would (the achievement of a better human), but I would exclude the inventions of many life altering devices as transhumanism. If we could invent a device that just made you smarter, then ideed that would be transhumanism, but if we invented a device that could make someone that was metally challenged to be able to be normal, I would define this as modern medicine. I just want to make sure we seperate advances in modern medicine from transhumanism. Modern medicine being the one that advances to deal with specific medical issues to improve quality of life (usually to restore it to normal conditions) and transhumanism being the one that can advance every single human (perhaps equally?). That being said, I think I agree with those you criticize, but perhaps for different reasons. Your not bringing up any of the issues that would arise if transhumanism were greatly effective. What would it be like living in a world where every single citizen could play Motzart with absolute perfection? How about where every single person had the capability of Motzarts genius? Would there then be any value to what Motzart brought us? Would there be anything special about it? I think when you picture a world where transhumanism was an effective science, you see a world where we can avoid death and run to work at 65 mph without cars and you personally can maintain your striking beauty. Your not picturing the inevidable evolution to the loss of individuality. As each breakthrough that was brought to us from transhumanism would not apply to certain people that have health issue, they would apply to each and every one of us (that is the idea right?). You need to picture the society that stops watching Tiger Woods because we are all out there shooting a 66 round of golf ourselves. You need to picture the society where that outlined picture of Air Jordan means dittily squat because we can all dunk from the free throw line. Perhaps your thinking how cool that we can all do that, but your missing that noone would do it because we all can. One last point. Would you accept the vampires bite? B/c your arguing here that it is illogical that anyone would not accept it. And yes you can take away the fangs and the ability to turn into a bat. The question still stands, if there was a little red pill in front of you right now that could make you live forever, would you take it? According to you its a no brainer.

I agree with all your points about why the arguments against transhumanism and for suffering are ridiculous. That being said, when I first heard about the ideas of Transhumanism, after the initial excitement wore off (since I'm a big tech nerd), my reaction was more of less the same as Massimo's. I don't particularly see the need for a philosophical movement for this.

New technologies don't develop and get invested in because of possibilities, and we don't really know how likely they are, of returns decades in the future. If it turns out these things are possible, we'll probably see something like small, incremental progress in research, a few adventurous people doing cutting edge work, and then a large breakthrough followed by a flood of investment of people trying to get in on the ground floor.

Similarly, if people believe that suffering is something God ordained for us, you're not going to convince them otherwise with philosophical arguments any more than you'll convince them there's no God at all. If the technologies do develop, acceptance of them will come as their use becomes more prevalent, not with arguments.

@Jim:"What would it be like living in a world where every single citizen could play Motzart with absolute perfection? How about where every single person had the capability of Motzarts genius? Would there then be any value to what Motzart brought us?"

Chimp 1: This "trans-chimpism" you speak of, I'm concerned that it will make life boring.Chimp 2: How so?Chimp 1: Well, you know how cool it is that your genius sister figured out how to get a banana from a tree with a stick?Chimp 2: Uh huh.Chimp 1: What if everyone could do that? What if we *all* could figure out cool things like how to easily get fruit? Wouldn't that cheapen your sister's accomplishment? Would there be any value to getting fruit anymore?Chimp 2: I think it's at least *conceivable* that getting smarter would give us newer and more interesting challenges. For instance, what are those funny glowy things in the night sky?Chimp 1: Bah! You've been into the fermented fruit again, haven't you?

Any differences between humans are basically height differences among a tribe of giants. A humanity with uniformly increased intelligence, skill etc. will still have relative geniuses and idiots, they'll just be better than us in an absolute sense.

"One last point. Would you accept the vampires bite? B/c your arguing here that it is illogical that anyone would not accept it... if there was a little red pill in front of you right now that could make you live forever, would you take it? According to you its a no brainer."

It sure is! Yes, I would definitely take it. As an amusing aside, a Twilight fanfic written by a LessWrong member answers similarly.

"Why - why - don't people want to be immortal? Why don't people care that everyone is dying? Why do they want to cure some deadly things like cancer and malaria [...]? Is everyone in the world but me actually suicidal and I just never noticed because they aren't all taking razors to their wrists?"

Sign me up for the red pill! In a future with immortality pills, I'm going to assume that the option of euthanasia will also be readily available.

Although I disagree with you, I think the points you raise are incredibly interesting. It kind of reminds me of the Matrix style "I know Kung Fu" information upload. It is completely valid, in my opinion, to think that uploading Italian in your mind takes away from the idea of language fluency in many ways. Looking something up in Google instead of taking the time to solve it yourself also takes away - but it's extremely handy!

Even in a world with “shortcuts” to physical and mental feats, individuality would not be lost. Being able to dunk at the foul line does not make you Michael Jordan. It is always what you do with your skills and knowledge that make you.

So I agree with you that a futuristic Matrix upload session that makes me understand Special Relativity cheapens it in many ways. That does not change the fact that it would be an amazing choice to have – one that I think would actually heighten individuality. I have a hard enough time figuring out what data is “relevant,” while purging the “irrelevant” at the same time – this would only exacerbate that ultimate human question: (after survival needs are met) What is the best way to use my Time? Since the “answer” is completely personal and always adapting with a continuously changing environment, I’d love to have red pill kinds of time.

I can see Massimo cringing at this fun, techno-optimistic thought experiment!

I think the "no one will be special" argument has already been answered.

I agree with the dying-to-be-human that in our current view of the human condition, meaning and pain and death are inextricably bound together. But to answer them, a new human condition would just create a new basis for meaning, and I'd like to suggest that our current basis for existential meaning is an illusory salve to deal with an inevitable death, and I'm far more interested in how meaning would take shape in a species full of immortal near gods, in which meaning might actually mean something.

Okay, you are right that there are individuals, churches and ideologies that do oppose this form of progress. When I was a student, I even met an otherwise very nice young woman who was fiercely convinced that we all would be better off if there was no life-prolonging medicine at all. In what sense would that be better, one wonders? The fetishization of "natural" among some people can reach ridiculous levels, and many of them seem thoroughly unimpressed by the counter that natural would with a high likelihood mean them having died of an easily treatable disease at age 2, or having starved to death due to the lack of artificial fertilizers and pesticides at age 7.

Nonetheless, my feeling is that these reactionaries have always existed, and they have never prevailed, at least more than very short term. The vast majority of people out there will always say yes to whatever improves their human condition from Monday to Saturday, even as they nod their heads in church on Sunday to the sermon of a priest speaking about the glory of suffering.

That being said, my beef with transhumanism remains. Inventing purchasable gadgets that improve your individual life does seem to be a somewhat narcissistic idea compared to the social movements aiming at making society more humane that I spent formative years in. As mentioned before, it also seems superfluous to organize a movement around those gadgets in the first place, as market forces will take care of that anyway, and we collectively face many problems that they won't. I am also fairly certain that becoming immortal would be a bad idea, for reasons too disparate and numerous to mention at this point.

Lastly, I am at least a bit skeptical about the wisdom of tinkering too much with our own DNA. Don't get me wrong - there are some horrible genetic diseases that can obviously be stamped out and the world will be a better place for it. But other, more subtle things, like increasing our intelligence, beauty, strenght, etc.? All that is terribly complicated; there may be trade-offs and correlations between different traits at play that we will overlook; and some of the things people want may simply turn out to be maladaptive (obvious example: "we want a baby that becomes tall, white, blonde and blue-eyed! Here is the money." - "Ah yes, thank you, we can do that. But have you considered that we are living in friggin' Australia, and that this colour scheme invites skin cancer under our intense sun?").

What we do know is that we have tried selective breeding on other animals than ourselves - pigs for more meat, chicken for more eggs, cows for more milk, some dogs for quaintness, all of them for docility. And apart from those things we selected for, the results are not pretty, as everything that was not actively selected for was neglected, inbred and degenerated. I fear we shall do the same to ourselves if we become overconfident.

@Q:"Haven't you read "Brave new world" ?At first sight, what scares me about transhumanism (but I may be wrong) is the pretention to have a universal and definitive definition of "better". That is generally where totalitarianism starts."

Haven't you read Schild's Ladder? We can trade fictional evidence all day. :)

More to the point, I really don't think totalitarianism has anything much to do with moral realism, which is what you seem to be implying. If I had to pick a single salient bad feature of totalitarian systems, it would be their tendency to place ideology ahead of the interests of actual people.

I don't know of anyone advocating coercive transhumanism. We're basically just thoroughgoing bio-liberals, when you get down to brass tacks.

Our choices are what define us. I think people should have more choices and that would, by definition, make them more free.

If I had the choice I would certainly go into my DNA and edit and I am sure many others would too. Who out there is going to stand up for continuing any of the horrific genetic diseases if we can get rid of them? Sadists that's who.

If there were a line to edit the Code to put my eyes in the right way (detectors in front wiring in the back) then I'd be in it. If there were a line to grow a third set of teeth I'd be in it. If there were a line to live to the end of my life without wrinkles or male pattern baldness I'd be in it and if all that ended up so that we lived in a world of healthy, smart, beautiful people (of whom I'd be one) then I can live with that. The only people against that are the ones who are that way now and would have their 'specialness' diluted. Too bad for them. Whiners. They are the people who want more sick, ugly and stupid so they can look better by comparison.

People really need to stop seeing humans as a thing and consider them a process. We have changed from what we were in the past and are not fixed now. In the future we will be different and eventually the time will come when someone today might not recognize a future human. You cannot stop change. You can only hope to direct it.

I have several substantive objections to transhumanism, which I will elaborate on in a forthcoming post (stay tuned, to be released Monday around midday).

However, several people keep talking about altering the "genetic code" of humans as if the human genome were a computer program. While this fits other transhumanist ideas (such us mind uploading), many professional biologists no longer think of genomes as blueprints for organisms, but as one of many, complex, and interactive causal factors that produce functional organisms. Just one example were oversimplification plays a role in the transhumanist ethos.

A technical paper on this subject, which I published earlier this year, is accessible on my philosophy web site: http://bit.ly/aexYgL

Comparing genetic manipulation to mind uploading is comparing apples to oranges grown on Titan. Genetic manipulation is a reality. Cloning and transgenic animals are with us right now. Mind uploading is an ill thought out fantasy. Lumping these two in the same category is disingenuous. It would be like putting early airplanes in the same category as interstellar warp drives and argue guilt by association.

"Well since transmotionists talk about interstellar faster than light travel and also talk about intercontinental jet travel they must be equally dismissible fantasy."

Granted some traits are determined by gestational influence and some by environmental influence but those factors can be controlled along with the genes to get the results you want. Throwing your hands up in the air and saying 'it can't be done' won't get you anywhere at all. Even using the rather crude genetic manipulation methods of selective breeding has gotten us most of the plants we depend on for food and our domestic animals including the large variety of dogs. The potential of direct genetic manipulation is vast. Humans have just barely begun to scratch the surface of it. I look forward to the day when Chlorophyll in our skin to reduce our need for food and have trees that produce electricity, but if you prefer the status quo and think that leads to a good place then by all means try and resist change.

However, several people keep talking about altering the "genetic code" of humans as if the human genome were a computer program.

That is part of my point. The other part is that, even if we learn how to tune certain traits up or down, I consider us humans to be too stupid to know what is good for us in that regard and in the long run. Like genetic diversity instead of everybody looking like a model, for example. Heck, even something seemingly straightforward like increased intelligence may be maladaptive because it has to trade off against something else (that, of course, would have to be tried out, but the expectation of a loss of genetic diversity sounds fairly realistic).

Kind of a tricky thing here, I notice. If transhumanism as a movement stays sensible, one can say that it is trivial and superfluous That attitude is the provocation for Julia's post, of course. If it goes beyond what is sensible, seriously expecting mind uploading, self-improving super AI magically solving all the world's problems in one year etc., it invites charges of being a quasi-religious, quasi-eschatological, irrational bunch of escapists, waiting for the singularity with the same unshakable faith as Christians for the second coming. Is there any middle ground possible?

What about habanero peppers? I love habanero peppers -- habanero hot sauce, jalapenos -- anything spicy. I love pushing myself to eat the hottest thing I can stand; it feels good for some reason.

This isn't a principled position of some kind. I don't like habaneros because I've been indoctrinated to aestheticize suffering. I'm not even thinking about aesthetics. I'm thinking about pleasure -- the sheer pleasure of eating spicy food. It's not reasoned -- it's part of my biology, I'm convinced.

I think it has to do with the ability to face pain without fear, in the process transcending pain. There's enormous pleasure in that transcendence -- more, even, I think, than in many kinds of pleasure unmixed with pain. (For example, I'd say I enjoy eating spicy food more than I enjoy eating chocolate.) If I lived in a world where that was not possible, I would miss that possibility.

I don't know exactly how that sits with your argument, Julia; but when I hear people talking about a "future without pain," I become depressed, because that would be a future without spicy food.

That's an interesting nit, Massimo. Of course, eliminating the tool or technique from the set of realistic options does little to change the moral argument for or against transhumanism...thus, the vampire pill thought experiment above, or (my favorite) the magic wand.

I think this is an excellent article which raised a great many important points. I watched Long for this World with Professor Hurlbut and was rather baffled that he seems to view radical life extension as a negative development. To me I can see negative aspects but I have to say that in most areas extending our life span will enable us to evolve and reach our true potential. Another area that interested me greatly is the meger of human and machine intelligence. In my opinion this is an inevitability because you only need to look at how attached we are to our iPhones and Blackberry’s to realise that we will ultimately be unable to resist moving artificial components which provide massively increased mental capability directly inside the body.

Interestingly people often oppose life extenson by arguing we will be over populated, jobs will be scarce etc. As far as jobs I see little real issue because the west is short of workers already. This is due to the low birth rate in countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain. In Japan things are even more serious so this aspect poses no significant problems for the next 100 years. As far as the population in general birth rates are falling worldwide and limiting population growth by opposing life extension is not an effective way of slowing population growth. Population growth is dependant mainly on how many children families produce than on how long people actually live.

As far as Medicare is concerned the treatments to control aging are likely to be much cheaper than the horrific costs currently incurred in treating heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other incapacitating degenerative illnesses which impair a persons quality of life. These conditions also create unsustainable burdens on social services by confining people to nursing homes where they can make little contribution to society. These conditions are conditions that become a problem in later life and do not usually effect younger people. When you consider that people often cost the health services more in the final year of life than in all of the rest of their life combined finding a way to slow or reverse it is vital. Aging is extremely bad for people not only is it a cause of suffering it is degrading to people who feel they are dependent on others for their basic day to day needs. The question has to be asked can this be right when millions of old people are in this position and we are close to being able to intervene and do something about it? My feeling is that there is no argument that can be raised that justifies denying these people the right to a higher quality of life. Any thoughts otherwise are inhumane and show a lack of respect for human dignity. It is reasonable to assume that within 10 years we might be able to add 7-8 years to a persons healthspan if not their actual lifespan. I would anticipate we would be able to add 25 years to our lifespan by no later than 2040.

Before I wrap up this posting bear in mind that around 150,000 people die every single day worldwide, of these about two-thirds die as a direct result of aging. That figure of 100,000 deaths is the equivalent of about thirty 9/11's every day of the year. In the first world countries deaths that are caused by aging run at around 90 percent of the total, what this means is that for every person who is killed in a traffic accident, a murder, falling off a cliff, get's shot on the battlefield or commits suicide there are 10 people who will die of aging. When you look at the figures you start to realise it has to end and fortunately the evidence suggests that we are within striking distance of being able to radically mitigate the greatest cause of suffering humanity has endured.

Like it or not these interventions with arrive and society with have to deal with the drawbacks and the benefits. How fast things happen depends on funding and clearly in that area goverments are not allocating funding in the areas that are most vital.

It was not an argument, but a suggestion : it's a really good SF book !

Ideologies are always motivated by a particular conception of good.You can be a moral realist for yourself, as long as you don't try to do my good against me. That's what I call totalitaranism (however grounded is your conception of good).

If transhumanism is only a matter of freedom, then I am fine with it. I just doubt it's a desirable project for humanity.

extending our life span will enable us to evolve and reach our true potential.

This kinda presumes that we will not add 20 more years of being frail and demented, as is most likely. Even if we take care of the frail part, it may well be that our minds are simply not built to last so long and may become neurose- and tic-ridden, in-my-youth-everything-was-better style, set in their ways hecklers no matter what you do to the body.

Another area that interested me greatly is the meger of human and machine intelligence. In my opinion this is an inevitability

If and when that is technically feasible. Seems still a looooooooooooooooong way off.

low birth rate in countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain

Alas, despite what you seem to think, this is not really a worldwide phenomenon. Nor can I really see it as a problem. To the best of my knowledge, current world population is several times the level that can be sustained in the long run. Even a singularity miracle will not change that brute fact, as it cannot magically raise groundwater levels again, reverse peak oil, peak phosphate, peak every friggin' non-renewable resource that exists, erosion of topsoil, additional loss of arable land to desertification, over-fertilization and salinization, ecosystem collapse due to over-fishing or over-hunting, genetic impoverishment of wild plants and animals due to habitat fragmentation, and so on ad infinitum. We are too many. Everything sold as a solution to us becoming fewer can only produce a hollow laugh for me.

As far as Medicare is concerned the treatments to control aging are likely to be much cheaper than the horrific costs currently incurred

Again, quite unwarranted optimism. So far, the trend seems to be that medical treatments get more and more expensive.

Before I wrap up this posting bear in mind that around 150,000 people die every single day worldwide, of these about two-thirds die as a direct result of aging.

No shit, Sherlock? That is really hilarious. Reminds me of those medical researchers who justify their studies of the heart with the argument that so and so many percent of people die of a heart attack each year. Yes, by all means go ahead and research, no problem. But that justification? We have to die of something, and everybody who does not die of a heart attack thanks to their work will later die of cancer or a stroke.

When will we be happy and finally accept that death is a part of life? Perhaps when statistics show that 10% of people die of accidents and 90% of suicide. More realistically, us being the silly humans we are, people will then alternately obsess about preventing accidents and suicides.

@Fisher"One last point. Would you accept the vampires bite? B/c your arguing here that it is illogical that anyone would not accept it." - Fisher

I think the equivocation here misses the mark a little. The vampire trope involves an advancement that is only available to an elite few, and necessarily to the detriment of the rest of humanity. Becoming a parasite on humanity isn't comparable to Transhumanism, but antithetical.

Your argument that differences in ability are necessary for individuality is more compelling (assuming I'm interpreting your argument correctly); however, I don't think the central premise holds. It seems to me that differences in capacity are not the only measures of distinction available to humans, and perhaps more importantly, that equal capacity does not necessarily result in less distinction. I would note that as composers (for example) approach the capabilities of Mozart and Bach, what most marks their advancement is the ability to distinguish themselves, not just from lesser composers, but from each other. Their excellence has not minimized the differences between them and their peers, but has refined and accentuated their individual voices. All bad violin players sound the same, but every virtuoso is unique.

Can the same be said of athletes? Maybe not, but maybe some things will stop being appreciated. I'm confident other achievements will take their place.

"Inventing purchasable gadgets that improve your individual life does seem to be a somewhat narcissistic idea compared to the social movements aiming at making society more humane that I spent formative years in."

It does seem that way, however when I was growing up, a cell phone was something Zach had in Saved by the Bell. Now homeless people have them. This is a result of mass production and technology, not altruism.

"The other part is that, even if we learn how to tune certain traits up or down, I consider us humans to be too stupid to know what is good for us in that regard and in the long run."

This is a superficially compelling argument, but the point at issue is whether we know better than random chance what is good for us. A low bar to clear.

"Like genetic diversity instead of everybody looking like a model, for example."

Women would want women to look like waif models, men would want women to look like the girls in beer commercials, women would want men to look like hairless androgynous models, men would want men to look like soccer players/wide receivers/swimmers/basketball players/heavyweight boxers...quite a lot of diversity there.

“CHRISTIAN ESSENTIALISM (CE)?” Let me try to make a moral case for it:

If we start with the premise that everyone should have the same vote and the same protections before the law, we need CE! However, it is impossible to logically arrive at this position from a materialistic philosophy. This is because materialism rejects CE in favor of a strictly materialistic lens – value is determined only from a materialistic lens, by what can be observed and measured.

However, if this is the only lens that the materialist has to access value, then humans must necessarily be assessed solely through this lens. Consequently, some humans will be necessarily regarded in a positive way, because they make “positive” contributions to society. Others will be assessed negatively – as a cost or detriment to society.

Therefore, some should DESERVE more social privilege and protection than others. While on one plain, most of us will agree that some people deserve punishment and some praise, from a strictly materialistic position, this becomes the ONLY perspective. Consequently, there is no materialistic basis for something like the “Bill of Rights!” Our unalienable rights have only one possible foundation – the fact that we were created in the image of God and therefore possess inestimable worth.

That's a silly argument. A government policy that guarantees equal rights and protection under the law is just a statement the government has no right to make those kind of distinctions you're talking about. It's not a moral referendum on the person, it's a legal check against excessive government control and arbitrary discrimination.

People who "contribute more to society" generally ARE afforded more privilege (and protection, if they want to pay for it). I'm not worth as much as the people who designed Google, and they've contributed a lot more to the world than I have. That doesn't mean the government shouldn't treat us equally, it just means they can buy a lot more stuff than I can.

You're missing my point. From a materialist perspective, it would make sense to NOT have laws that establish equal protection and equal rights simply because we are not equal. According to what we see with our eyes, there are vast differences!

Let me try to set the record straight about the Christian emphasis on pain. We believe in the necessity of emotional pain in the same way that we believe that it's good that we feel pain when we place our hand on a hot burner. We need pain, at least some forms of it.

- I'd like to see people live exactly as long as they *want* to live (not "forever"), and with good quality of life. Alex SL seemed to imply that just having a pulse for an extra 20 years would be the transhumanist dream made real. Bah!

- Scott wonders whether a future without pain would be worth wanting. That's a good question, and my answer is no (& I'm not alone in that). But I think we would do well to eliminate the worst of it. Maybe we can throw away torture but still keep the habanero peppers? I don't think that'd be too dystopian. The problem is basically that we have no recourse from the really horrible sort of pain, and the worst pain your body can experience is about 10000x more intense than the best pleasure. That seems... skewed, don't you think? (Wireheading is the opposite danger).

- Much discussion of "whither beauty" in an age when people can modify their looks fairly easily. This one is doubly *not* a trick question, as we live at the start of that age. What happens when everybody can be beautiful? I can think of bad things to say about it, and evidently so can other commenters. I can also think of good things: for example, it just might make physical attractiveness less of a factor in mate choice, to be supplanted by - what? Personality? Intelligence? Kindness? Your choice, really. (Countersignaling also guarantees the existence of a "non-modded" subculture glorying in every mole, scar and lazy eye).

- I notice that this topic seems to have a tendency towards slippery slope thinking. As in, somebody mentions the idea of curbing suffering, and that immediately gets reductio'ed to an ultra-anaesthetized dystopia. Or if changing physical appearance becomes possible, every human female will immediately turn herself into Paris Hilton, and then beauty will cease to exist.

My question: is there any reason to expect these nightmare scenarios to happen *overnight,* before anyone notices something amiss? Are future humans too stupid to recognize approaching dystopia when they see it? If not, maybe the extreme scenarios are not in themselves a good reason to throw away the whole project.

@Manns Word:With respect, I suggest that you let the materialists present their own metaethics, rather than speculating from outside on what materialists "must necessarily" believe. It is a good general policy to let the opponent make their own arguments, since it's pretty hard to see all the possibilities inherent in a worldview without actually inhabiting it.

I do not think that trans-humanism is a different movement from humanism in general. What is transhumanism? Transhumanism is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. What is humanism? Humanism is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.

I would say that transhumanism is a special focus (with)in humanism, to explicitly point out the qualitatively changing power of technology on society and human (and transhuman) life. Many humans are reluctant to consider this for I think at least two different reasons. The first is the ideological resistance you discussed. Many find it right that "god" or "nature" or whatever has put man in poverty and pain, and what gives meaning to human life is to show that we can take that. The other is status quo bias. We tend to think of the future as a just slightly different version of the present. While actually it might be even qualitatively different, and this is the point for the transhumanists to first of all point out, but maybe even in some cases to analyse and discuss.

The qualitatively different future can of course be for better or worse. Here I have actually a critical reflection on your post. I think you misrepresent transhumanism by neglecting the "for worse" case. An important part of transhumanism is technology precaution. To point out how technology development could negatively affect humanities future and to discuss how we could reduce the probability such negative scenaria to materialize.

See also my comment July 17, 2009, 7:44 PMhttp://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/07/problems-with-transhumanism.html

From a materialist perspective, you can see differences between individuals, but how could you judge those differences ?

Only a value system (the kind of system religion provides) allows you to judge people and declare than some deserve more than others.

From a materialist perspective, a state should be neutral relatively to any value system (including religious ones). That is the fundation of our rights, and as you can see, it is not christian, but materialistic.

You're right in that I doubt any "materialist" would make the case that we're all naturally equal in terms of our abilities. Saying that people are inherently different is not the same as saying that the government policy should be to treat everyone differently. There's any number of secular reasons to think those aren't distinctions that are right for the government to make.

I'm not sure my last post was that clear, so I'll try to better explain what I think is happening in this debate.

Coming from a Christian perspective, you believe that God has given people an innate metaphysical "value", that every human being has, and you believe that's what you believe the government policy to treat everyone equally is morally predicated on.

You assume that because atheists don't believe in God, and hence don't believe in anything transcendent that sanctions the value of human life, we should logically want some other kind of overbearing, powerful entity to assign people value based on their material contributions.

But, like I said before, a government which adopts a policy to treat everyone equally under the law is NOT a statement of their value, it's essentially a check against an excessively powerful government which has different rules for different people. There's lots of reasons to not want a government that does that. From ideological views about the appropriate role of government, to practical views based on empirical data about what happens when a government treats citizens differently under the law (here's a hint: it usually ends with lots of people dying). None of this has anything to do with God.

"The other part is that, even if we learn how to tune certain traits up or down, I consider us humans to be too stupid to know what is good for us in that regard and in the long run."

This is a superficially compelling argument, but the point at issue is whether we know better than random chance what is good for us. A low bar to clear.

Not going out of my way trying to be mean here, but are you a creationist? Because it is usually those guys who misrepresent evolution as random.

Re ianpollock:

The problem for me is that I am arguing three things at the same time, and I may not have seperated them well enough: (1) that most transhumanist dreams are probably wildly naive and unrealistic, (2) that those laudable ones that aren't are nothing that it is necessary to form a movement around (implying that the same time and energy might be better invested promoting things that do not happen on their own anyway, like environmentalism, freethought or eradication of poverty), and (3) that some of the presumably unrealistic dreams, if they could actually be realized, might, while being very nice for the individual, have negative consequences for our species as a whole or the planet. Although (3) is not so important, as I believe that we are hosed anyway the way we continue reproducing and living above our means. Anyway, the hugely greater likelihood of achieving twenty more years of tottering around with back pain and diabetes instead of eternal youth is a point relevant to (1).

Re gralm:

Julia, why do you respect somebody who likes you to shrivel up and die in agony?

You will notice that nobody here so far seems to have promoted dismantling all medicinal research programmes. The discussion is mostly about whether the transhumanist movement is advocating any things apart from those that do not need advocating for in the first place or are impossible. Also, if somebody does argue that getting old and dying is unavoidable and better for our species as a whole, your quib is still disingenious. You could just as well try to villify an economist with "Julia, why do you respect somebody who does not want you to become a billionaire?" Yeah, well, because if we all suddenly get handed a billion bucks each, our economy will sink into inflationary chaos. It is a brute fact of life that there things that everybody wants but that it would be unwise to give everybody, and immortality for seven billion humans may just be one of those.

O, You responded, "From a materialist perspective, a state should be neutral relatively to any value system (including religious ones)."

As I see it, there are two problems with your response. Whatever a State does is value-laden and not "neutral," especially when it adopts an equal-rights position.

Secondly, materialism must draw its views and values from the material world. Once again, from this perspective, the material contributions of us humans are very different -- some positive and some altogether negative. This perception should argue for differential rights and protections.

It is only the understanding that we are created in the image of God that can offer the counter-balancing perspective.

I’d like to make an observation. You are now operating out of a pragmatic perspective and not a materialistic perspective, but to some extent I agree with your pragmatic assessment. It makes pragmatic sense to regard people as “equal.” However, here are some reasons why pragmatism can’t take the place of God:

1. Governments and laws based purely of pragmatic concerns are inadequate. People, places and practical concerns are always in flux. It follows that all laws should also be in flux. Many are and should be responsive to pragmatic concerns, but there also needs to be underlying and unchanging principles of justice and truth that pure pragmatism can’t support.

2. Pure pragmatism turns us into hypocrites. We treat people one way but have an entirely different attitude towards them. Just consider the psychotherapist who practices “unconditional positive regard.” On the surface he’s one way, but in his heart he despises the weakness or illness he sees in his client.

3. Pure pragmatism fails to provide an adequate rational basis for real compassion. Although many atheists are compassionate – far more than me – lacking an adequate philosophy to support compassion, compassion will atrophy. In this regard, I like what Dinesh D’Souza said about Aristotle:

• “Aristotle, too, had a job for low men: slavery. Aristotle argued that with low men in servitude, superior men would have leisure to think and participate in governance of the community. Aristotle cherished the ‘great-souled man’ who was proud, honorable, aristocratic, rich.” (“What’s so Great about Christianity”)

4. Pragmatism is myopic. It will inevitably sell-out to immediate needs and lusts. After all, getting that promotion is more pragmatic than the uncertain principles of what society needs to function. Heck with that if I need to put food on my table!

Just a concluding observation: The fact that what is pragmatic so well accords with the moral absolutes that we recognize without our hearts, speaks persuasively to a grand harmony and design and a Designer!

The constitution is neutral. The actions of a state may be value-laden, democraticaly negociated, but the framework is neutral, that is the important point. This is a secular principle.

Secondly, materialism must draw its views and values from the material world. Once again, from this perspective, the material contributions of us humans are very different -- some positive and some altogether negative.

I don't thing materialism draws any value. Every individual can draw its own values, this is something subjective.Thus a constitution is neutral because it is secular.

You must acknowledge that the states which promote equalities are the same one which promote the separation of church and state, and the states based on religious principles are also the most non-egalitarian. This is a fact.

Before equality rights and separation of state and church were established inside real political systems in Europe and America, following the ideas of rational -materialist- philosophers, Christianity had always been very compatible with feodality.

You can have christian values if you want, it is not a problem to me, but noone should claim that his/her values are absolute and should rule everyone.

A political system aims at being a framework for collective decisions, where people may have different values and opinions. That is why it must be neutral, and that's where equality of rights comes from. It's not a religious (neither an atheist) question, but a rational one.

I can't think of how to respond to your claims individually without being too tangential, this isn't a debate about the merits of pragmatism. I think you're still missing something about the atheist point of view, though.

Atheists aren't looking for anything to take the place of God, pragmatism or government or otherwise. We're not looking for some universal standard of human value. You keep operating under the assumption that "Because my morality is derived from God, and atheists don't have God, they must have something that serves the same function." But we don't; most of us see everything, including the role of government and moral values, as open to rational debate.

Basically you're using two different definitions of value. In the Christian view, you're seeing it as some universal value we're all born with inherently (although I imagine you'd have a difficult time defining exactly what that "value" is, and I find religious explanations of human value to be tautological, ie "Human value is the value God gives to human life"), and in the absence of that you're asking how we define peoples "value" on a material level. But it isn't exactly clear what you mean by material value. Just their monetary value? Their non-monetary contributions to the world? Their value to the people in their lives? Excepting their monetary value, these things aren't easily quantifiable, and nobody would claim that government should play any role in doing so.

I was looking for information about the latest CFI scandal (which I so far failed to find) when I by chance found the following by Russell Blackford: http://jme.bmj.com/content/35/12/347.abstract

Title:Moral pluralism versus the total view: why Singer is wrong about radical life extension

Unfortunately only abstract is available for free. Peter Singer has argued that we should not proceed with a hypotetical life extension and Russell Blackford argues that we should. The abstract uses some technical jargong in theoretical ethics that I do not follow. But it seems to be very relevant to the discussion here.

Again, I think you’re doing a good job in summarizing my position, and perhaps you’re right that I just don’t get the atheistic position. You seem to be saying that, as an atheist, you don’t have a morality – just “rational debate.”

Isn’t that a little like going through life without eyes and ears? We make thousands of decisions a day, both internal and external. “Debate” alone can’t mediate among our decisions, conflicts, and challenges, no matter how rational. It would seem that without basic principles by which to live, we wander blindly, banging up against things – not knowing where we are or even where we’re supposed to go? Instead, there is great satisfaction knowing that we’ve done the right thing; and when we’ve done the wrong thing, there is relief when we can correct it.

Alex SL, you said, "Inventing purchasable gadgets that improve your individual life does seem to be a somewhat narcissistic idea compared to the social movements aiming at making society more humane that I spent formative years in."

I'm still not sure why you see this as an either-or. Both seem valuable to me. For example, aren't medicines and eyeglasses and cell phones "purchasable gadgets that improve your individual life"? If that criterion doesn't make developing them pointless, then why would it make things like human enhancement and life extension pointless?

However, I do agree with the arguments you made for caution, especially when it comes to tinkering with our DNA. I talked about that a bit in the podcast; it seems to me that against the background of overall caution, there are some guidelines we could use to reason about whether we should expect a proposed modification to be detrimental. Whether or not it's worth it to try tinkering at all depends, I suppose, on how much you value the potential outcomes relative to how much tolerance you have for risk.

But my post wasn't meant to be an argument for the risks of enhancement being worth it. My post was making a much more basic argument: that enhancement would be a good thing if we COULD accomplish it safely.

Interesting. But your example of the pain from touching a hot stove seems to imply that the reason we need pain is to warn us away from doing things that are bad for us. That may be true, but if we only need pain for signaling purposes, surely a much milder sting would be preferable than the agonies we currently suffer! And if we had the ability to turn off the signal, that would come in very handy in cases when there's nothing we can do about the situation (e.g., once we've already burned ourselves, do we really need our bodies screaming at us for a few more weeks? I think I would get the message pretty quickly that fire=bad.)

I do not see technological advances as pointless, but I see a movement cheer-leading those gadgets as pointless and time-wasting. Note that cell phones and the internet were invented without an international movement having congresses in the sixties and seventies about how we should invent them. It is an either-or not in the sense that we should do environmentalism etc. instead of inventing an artificial eye, but in the sense that a spare time activist should aim their limited resources for activism at something that is not completely superfluous to do because it happens anyway.

Also, I could understand it better if it were about guaranteeing universal availability of the fruits of technological progress, but the movement seems to be mostly about celebrating techno-optimism, while participation and access for the poor are mostly blind spots. That is somehow supposed to happen automatically - I think?

No, saying that everything is open to rational debate is not saying I actually debate every little decision I make. I, like nearly everyone, have a set of ethics I think can be derived practically, without appealing to any metaphysical authority. That's not the same as saying there's an objective morality that, in the Christian view, is essentially axiomatic (meaning it would be the same even if 100% of the world believed otherwise).

I have a feeling this debate won't be fruitful much beyond this point, and we'll just be going around in circles.

"...several people keep talking about altering the "genetic code" of humans as if the human genome were a computer program. While this fits other transhumanist ideas (such us mind uploading), many professional biologists no longer think of genomes as blueprints for organisms, but as one of many, complex, and interactive causal factors that produce functional organisms. Just one example were oversimplification plays a role in the transhumanist ethos..."

I'm a transhumanist and I don't think that. And to suggest that most other transhumanists think that shows you don't really know much about our ethos. I'd say there are few who call themselves transhumanist who aren't aware of the complexities of biology.

Louis, okay, I'll bite. So transhumanists have a better theory of human genomics than currently available to biologists? Or are you saying that most transhumanists are actually schooled in the intricacies of modern evolutionary genomics? Or what?

@Manns Word:"I hope then you will take your own advice and censure Julia for speaking about the Christian position."

I didn't mean to be too censorious; I just want to curb the tendency to criticize an idea by doing "extrapolation" coloured by one's own ideology. For example, I can look at the divine command theory of morality and conclude that theists "must necessarily" abdicate all personal moral responsibility. Now, even though I think there's a grain of truth in that, I also know that theists *do* express belief in personal moral responsibility. So I'm essentially objecting to *my own* homebrew version of theism. See the problem there?

"Many have grown in sensitivity and understanding through these life-changing long-term "conversations." "

This is a pretty callous view; oddly enough, it almost sounds like social darwinism. And above all, sour grapes, only this time at second hand. Even in the unlikely event that an AIDS patient finds all the suffering has made her more sensitive, I doubt she'll refuse treatment when it comes. And I really doubt I could convince you to infect yourself, in exchange for that wonderful increase in sensitivity and understanding.

Your first clarification shows gentleness and humility. I was almost ready to say, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God,” until I saw your second comment.

I’m afraid that you misunderstood me on that one. Although most of us can appreciate the value of suffering in so far as it’s thrust upon us, this doesn’t argue that we should pursue it. Instead, the latter stance might suggest a form of arrogance – “I can take more pain than others!”

Instead, suffering, rejection, failures can teach us humility and compassion. Trust me, I flee from pain and other situations that are greater than my resources. However, suffering is an inextricable part of life. We might as well accept it and learn to find value in the inevitable.

"...suffering is an inextricable part of life. We might as well accept it and learn to find value in the inevitable."

The trouble with accepting the inevitable is that then nobody even tries to evit it.

An analogy would be a country in which corruption is rampant: the more people think all politicians are corrupt, the better it is for the corrupt politicians.

There are some tragedies we can do something about, and some we can do nothing about. The danger comes when you redefine a tragedy as non-tragic because you don't know how to prevent it. That's a very significant concession to the dark side.

"Louis, okay, I'll bite. So transhumanists have a better theory of human genomics than currently available to biologists? Or are you saying that most transhumanists are actually schooled in the intricacies of modern evolutionary genomics? Or what?"

I'm not saying that at all, I'm simply saying that we are aware of the complexities of biology. To suggest that we think we can swap in and out specific genes to express specific traits without consequence to epigenetics is a straw man. Which is, to say the least, disappointing. What thinks you of all the professional biologists who are transhumanists, I'd love to know?

Louis, I'd like to know which professional biologists are transhumanists. Regardless, it seems to me that you are now the one setting up a strawman. The issue isn't whether transhumanists are *thinking* about these issues. Maybe they are. But that's a long shot from translating into considering the problems seriously enough, and even more so to actually do something about it. Has transhumanism actually generated any novel research into genotype x environment interactions? (That was a rhetorical question.)